A variety of brewing techniques have been developed to extract flavors, substances and other characteristics from beverage brewing substances. Such beverage brewing substances can include coffee, tea, tisanes, herbal, botanical, and a variety of other substances. Generally, brewing techniques involve infusing such brewing substances with water or another liquid or combination of liquids to extract the desired characteristics from the brewing substance and essentially infuse the brewing liquid with those substances and characteristics. The substances may include volatiles, caffeine, color chemicals, aroma producing chemicals, as well as finer particles. The substances and particles can contribute to the desired flavors, aromas, as well as mouth feel of the resultant beverage. The resulting beverage can be used either directly as a beverage for consumption “as is” or as a component of another beverage such as may be achieved by dilution, mixing with other substances such as milk, soy milk, sugar, or other flavorings whether generally in a solid or liquid form.
A wide variety of brewing techniques have been developed using hot liquids in combination with the brewing substance as well as ambient or chilled temperature liquids. The different brewing techniques can be used to produce different resultant beverages. For example, chilled or “cold brew” beverages might have a different chemical makeup or different chemical composition that some people using this technique suggest produces lower acidity in the finished beverage. One form of cold brewing technique is referred to as “Toddy” which uses a volume of beverage brewing substance retained in a filter device in combination with ambient or chilled liquid dispensed into the beverage brewing substance. The containers associated with this brewing technique are of sufficient size and dimension to permit combination of these ingredients to produce a desired resultant volume of cold brewed coffee. This technique can be quite time consuming taking approximately 12-24 hours to produce a batch of finished brewed coffee. This technique steeps or soaks ground coffee over a long period of time in a large volume container such as a bucket and requires draining and filtering after the steeping period. This technique can result in unpredictability and waste due to making a large volume of coffee well in advance of the time it is used. If more coffee is needed during the dispensing time it cannot be made quickly due to the long steep time. If less is needed the remainder will be wasted.
Other cold brewing techniques may use a controlled slow dispensing or drip dispensing of ambient or chilled water onto a beverage brewing substance over an extended period of time to limit the contact time the water has with the beverage brewing substance as it passes through the beverage brewing substance and the filter for subsequent dispensing into a collection container. This technique may be different from the Toddy technique in that the Toddy technique tends to combine a larger volume of water with the beverage brewing substance resulting in longer contact time between the water and the beverage brewing substance.
It would be desirable to provide a system, method and apparatus for cold brewing beverages, such as coffee, to produce a resultant beverage in a shorter period of time. It would also be desirable to provide enhanced control of the brewing operation to control the resulting characteristics of the beverage.
This background information is believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present disclosure. No admission is intended, nor should such admission be inferred or construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present disclosure. Other aims, objects, advantages and features of the disclosure will become more apparent upon reading of the following non-restrictive description of specific embodiments thereof, given by way of example only with reference to the accompanying drawings.
The exemplification set out herein illustrates embodiments of the disclosure that are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the disclosure in any manner. Additional features of the present disclosure will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments exemplifying the best mode of carrying out the disclosure as presently perceived.